Abstract Understanding the processes underlying species richness across multiple sites is a major challenge in ecology. Metacommunity theory assumes that local community assemblages are largely structured by spatial and environmental factors. However, the relative importance of these factors is not clear and has varied between studies. Most studies were conducted at sampling intervals that were short ( 1 km). In this study, to address a dearth of data at intermediate sampling intervals, we examined the pattern of the soil Collembola metacommunity in an agroecosystem by sampling at 40 m intervals to try to disentangle the relative influence of spatial-environmental interactions on community composition. The soil Collembola community was sampled at 121 locations arranged regularly within a 400 m × 400 m corn field, over three months (August, September, and October 2015). We used standard geospatial analysis of metacommunity structure analytical framework to identify the pattern of soil Collembola metacommunity, with three essential elements (coherence, species turnover, and boundary clumping), to provide clues to the processes driving community assembly. We used variance partitioning analysis to determine the relative contributions of spatial and environmental factors (e.g., soil pH value, soil organic matter, soil total nitrogen and soil water content). From the results of the analysis, the soil Collembola metacommunity showed a nested pattern (rather than random, checkerboards, nested subsets, evenly spaced, Clementsian and Gleasonian patterns) on all three sampling dates. Soil Collembola metacommunities have a less restricted distribution along the environmental gradient, and connectivity may be important in shaping the community composition at this intermediate sampling interval. Based on the results of the variance partitioning analysis, spatial factors only explained 7.03–14.4% of the soil Collembola community variance, while the environmental factors were not significant at this scale. Our results suggest that both spatial and environmental factors are minor drivers of soil Collembola communities at an intermediate sampling frequency, compared to other studies conducted at shorter or longer sampling intervals.

中文翻译：

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空间和环境因素是玉米农业生态系统中土壤弹尾虫群落的次要结构力

摘要 了解跨多个地点的物种丰富度背后的过程是生态学的一项重大挑战。元社区理论假设当地社区组合在很大程度上是由空间和环境因素构成的。然而，这些因素的相对重要性尚不清楚，并且因研究而异。大多数研究都是以较短的采样间隔（1 公里）进行的。在这项研究中，为了解决中间采样间隔数据的缺乏问题，我们通过以 40 m 的间隔采样来检查农业生态系统中土壤跳虫群落的模式，以试图解开空间-环境相互作用对群落组成的相对影响。在 400 m × 400 m 玉米田内定期排列的 121 个地点对土壤跳虫群落进行采样，历时三个月（8 月，2015 年 9 月和 10 月）。我们使用元群落结构分析框架的标准地理空间分析来确定土壤跳虫元群落的模式，具有三个基本要素（连贯性、物种周转和边界聚集），为推动群落组装的过程提供线索。我们使用方差分区分析来确定空间和环境因素（例如，土壤 pH 值、土壤有机质、土壤总氮和土壤含水量）的相对贡献。从分析结果来看，土壤跳虫群落在所有三个采样日期都显示出嵌套模式（而不是随机、棋盘格、嵌套子集、均匀间隔、克莱门茨和格里森模式）。土壤弹尾虫群落沿环境梯度分布的限制较少，在这个中间采样间隔，连通性对于塑造社区组成可能很重要。根据方差划分分析的结果，空间因素仅解释了土壤弹尾虫群落方差的 7.03-14.4%，而环境因素在该尺度上不显着。我们的结果表明，与以较短或较长采样间隔进行的其他研究相比，空间和环境因素都是中等采样频率下土壤弹尾虫群落的次要驱动因素。而环境因素在这个规模上并不显着。我们的结果表明，与以较短或较长采样间隔进行的其他研究相比，空间和环境因素都是中等采样频率下土壤弹尾虫群落的次要驱动因素。而环境因素在这个规模上并不显着。我们的结果表明，与以较短或较长采样间隔进行的其他研究相比，空间和环境因素都是中等采样频率下土壤弹尾虫群落的次要驱动因素。